The populist signal is getting louder - and mainstream politics is under threat

UKIP came from nowhere to finish second in the Eastleigh by-election. According to the latest Ipsos MORI poll, its leader has a positive net approval rating - something that can't be said for David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. The Tea Party has taken possession of the Republican Party’s agenda in the United States. Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement currently leads the opinion polls in Italy. The Danish People’s Party has overtaken the ruling Social Democrats for the first time in an opinion poll. Respect beat Labour in the safe seat of Bradford West.

George Galloway, Nigel Farage, Beppe Grillo, and Sarah Palin have little in common ideologically. But they share one thing – they are populists and populism is the major challenger brand in politics today. What’s more, the established mainstream parties are disorientated in their responses; so mainstream democracy is under stress. Much attention has been devoted to extremist parties, organisations and movements such as Golden Dawn, the EDL and the National Socialist Underground in German- which do pose a security threat. But populism is something quite different – a signal of stress in mainstream democracy.

Populists in the UK, elsewhere in Europe and the US have been dismissed as 'protest' parties, cranks, closet racists and clowns. In reality, they are a real challenge to the way that mainstream parties approach democracy - as a set of compromises underpinned by institutional balances. Populism is an expressive way of doing democracy that has disdain for politics, complexity and compromise.

Populists want democracy to be more driven by the 'general will', a return to a morally pure past, less constrained by law, human rights, and the EU, and for what they see as a corrupt and self-interest political classes to be replaced by 'true democracy'. If the 'the people' want to freeze immigration or protect social spending then that should happen. If the EU is a barrier to the 'general will' of a nation, then it should be confronted. Political elites are corrupt and so is the system they occupy. We need a return to the heartland of the true spirit of a people – before self-interested elites took possession of our democracy. These are the populist modes of argument – whether they are of the far-right, far-left, or even the centre.

Unless mainstream parties of the centre-right and centre-left wake up to the nature of the populist threat, their ability to govern will be heavily restricted. The populist radical right is the most successful variant of populism today - the most successful new party movement in Europe in the last quarter of a century. The Danish People’s Party, the FPO in Austria, Geert Widlers’s PVV in the Netherlands, UKIP in the UK and the Front National in France are just some of the variants of this political family.

The populist radical right was growing well before financial crisis, recession and austerity and is responding to real demands for better protection of ‘the people’ and ways of life. Even in the UK, hitherto insulated by its majoritarian electoral system, the populist radical right in the form of UKIP is beginning to make in-roads. If they get their organisation and tactics right as the Greens did in 2010, it is not impossible to imagine Nigel Farage winning a parliamentary seat in 2015 or even before – contrary to conventional wisdom.

This is not a 'protest' or a 'joke'; it is a direct challenge to the democratic norm. Failure to respond adequately could further fuel the rise of the populists. Mainstream democrats can reverse this tide or they can be swallowed by it. Dismissing the threat and burying heads in the sand is a foolhardy response - and yet that is what it appears to be the approach.

Does it matter? Yes, because populists rarely have any real answers and they can stoke up antipathy for minority groups as well as the way modern democracy functions. This spreads further cynicism, threatens the well-being of some, and undermines the ability of mainstream parties to act in the national interest - even if they are in office. Populism does reflect a real set of values and attitudes which are an entirely legitimate democratic expression, the parties and movements are dishonest about the reality of the constraints that all political decision-makers face.

They express what some of the people want but can't meet what the people need. Their further success is likely to corrode trust in a way that is damaging - regardless of their electoral success or failure. And this is why populism and its actual nature should no longer be ignored.

How can mainstream parties respond? The new Policy Network report into "Democratic stress, the populist signal and extremist threat" outlines two mains substantive responses – statecraft and contact democracy. If the charge is that mainstream elites no longer govern in general interest then they to prove that they can. This means pursing approaches to political economy, welfare reform, public services and immigration that meet needs and respond to the values of the majority – which are mainly pragmatic. Secondly, there is some truth in the charge that mainstream democracy has become distant, closed, controlled by cabals and politically nepotistic. Mainstream parties have to open out, rebuild their local organisations in a way that responds to people instead of just pumping out junk mail, and bring in more a diverse range of representatives – in terms of their real life experience.

Populism – especially in its radical right manifestation – is a real threat to mainstream democracy under stress. The response is not to dismiss it – a natural but counter-productive reflex. Unless there is a more convincing statecraft blended with a renewing contact democracy, then stresses can become crises. The signal is clear. The mainstream response has been anything but.

Hannan Fodder: This week, Daniel Hannan gets his excuses in early

Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy...

When I started this column, there were some nay-sayers talking Britain down by doubting that I was seriously going to write about Daniel Hannan every week. Surely no one could be that obsessed with the activities of one obscure MEP? And surely no politician could say enough ludicrous things to be worthy of such an obsession?

They were wrong, on both counts. Daniel and I are as one on this: Leave and Remain, working hand in glove to deliver on our shared national mission. There’s a lesson there for my fellow Remoaners, I’m sure.

Anyway. It’s week three, and just as I was worrying what I might write this week, Dan has ridden to the rescue by writing not one but two columns making the same argument – using, indeed, many of the exact same phrases (“not a club, but a protection racket”). Like all the most effective political campaigns, Dan has a message of the week.

First up, on Monday, there was this headline, in the conservative American journal, the Washington Examiner:

“We will get a good deal – because rational self-interest will overcome the Eurocrats’ fury”

The message of the two columns is straightforward: cooler heads will prevail. Britain wants an amicable separation. The EU needs Britain’s military strength and budget contributions, and both sides want to keep the single market intact.

The Con Home piece makes the further argument that it’s only the Eurocrats who want to be hardline about this. National governments – who have to answer to actual electorates – will be more willing to negotiate.

And so, for all the bluster now, Theresa May and Donald Tusk will be skipping through a meadow, arm in arm, before the year is out.

Before we go any further, I have a confession: I found myself nodding along with some of this. Yes, of course it’s in nobody’s interests to create unnecessary enmity between Britain and the continent. Of course no one will want to crash the economy. Of course.

I’ve been told by friends on the centre-right that Hannan has a compelling, faintly hypnotic quality when he speaks and, in retrospect, this brief moment of finding myself half-agreeing with him scares the living shit out of me. So from this point on, I’d like everyone to keep an eye on me in case I start going weird, and to give me a sharp whack round the back of the head if you ever catch me starting a tweet with the word, “Friends-”.

Anyway. Shortly after reading things, reality began to dawn for me in a way it apparently hasn’t for Daniel Hannan, and I began cataloguing the ways in which his argument is stupid.

Problem number one: Remarkably for a man who’s been in the European Parliament for nearly two decades, he’s misunderstood the EU. He notes that “deeper integration can be more like a religious dogma than a political creed”, but entirely misses the reason for this. For many Europeans, especially those from countries which didn’t have as much fun in the Second World War as Britain did, the EU, for all its myriad flaws, is something to which they feel an emotional attachment: not their country, but not something entirely separate from it either.

Consequently, it’s neither a club, nor a “protection racket”: it’s more akin to a family. A rational and sensible Brexit will be difficult for the exact same reasons that so few divorcing couples rationally agree not to bother wasting money on lawyers: because the very act of leaving feels like a betrayal.

Problem number two: even if everyone was to negotiate purely in terms of rational interest, our interests are not the same. The over-riding goal of German policy for decades has been to hold the EU together, even if that creates other problems. (Exhibit A: Greece.) So there’s at least a chance that the German leadership will genuinely see deterring more departures as more important than mutual prosperity or a good relationship with Britain.

And France, whose presidential candidates are lining up to give Britain a kicking, is mysteriously not mentioned anywhere in either of Daniel’s columns, presumably because doing so would undermine his argument.

So – the list of priorities Hannan describes may look rational from a British perspective. Unfortunately, though, the people on the other side of the negotiating table won’t have a British perspective.

Problem number three is this line from the Con Home piece:

“Might it truly be more interested in deterring states from leaving than in promoting the welfare of its peoples? If so, there surely can be no further doubt that we were right to opt out.”

I could go on, about how there’s no reason to think that Daniel’s relatively gentle vision of Brexit is shared by Nigel Farage, UKIP, or a significant number of those who voted Leave. Or about the polls which show that, far from the EU’s response to the referendum pushing more European nations towards the door, support for the union has actually spiked since the referendum – that Britain has become not a beacon of hope but a cautionary tale.

But I’m running out of words, and there’ll be other chances to explore such things. So instead I’m going to end on this:

Hannan’s argument – that only an irrational Europe would not deliver a good Brexit – is remarkably, parodically self-serving. It allows him to believe that, if Brexit goes horribly wrong, well, it must all be the fault of those inflexible Eurocrats, mustn’t it? It can’t possibly be because Brexit was a bad idea in the first place, or because liberal Leavers used nasty, populist ones to achieve their goals.

Read today, there are elements of Hannan’s columns that are compelling, even persuasive. From the perspective of 2020, I fear, they might simply read like one long explanation of why nothing that has happened since will have been his fault.

Jonn Elledge is the editor of the New Statesman's sister site CityMetric. He is on Twitter, far too much, as @JonnElledge.